From rogue pirates to shipping companies to foreign natives and
international institutions, the diversity of interests and perspectives in the coming years will confound simple solutions to the dangerous piracy going on, military or otherwise. With these complex issues in mind, IFTF has partnered with the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) and the Office of Naval Research (ONR) on a project called MMOWGLI—massively multiplayer online war game leveraging the internet. This experimental platform builds on IFTF’s earlier successes with "massively multiplayer forecasting" platforms like Signtific Lab and Foresight Engine.

The first pilot for MMOWGLI launches on May 16 with a reseach scenario of Somali piracy. MMOWGLI goes a step further than IFTF's earlier platforms that focused on rapid-fire ideation by hundreds and even thousands of players. This pilot also tests the potential to turn complex chains of crowdsourced ideas into more robust plans of action, to support self-organizing strategic teams and even networks, to expand the traditional mandate of the wargame to include diverse participants from beyond the military, and to consider responses to the Somali pirate situation that go beyond the kinetic solutions at sea.

In this partnership, IFTF laid out a vision and plan with our collaborators for a new kind of game that spans hierarchical ranks, crosses organizational divides, and harnesses diverse expertise. Led by Research Director of Human-Future Interaction Jason Tester, the IFTF team has worked closely to consult with ONR and NPS, to translate this vision into designs for a gaming platform and an immersive gameplay experience. While NPS took the lead in applying an innovative software development environment to this already complex task, IFTF has been committed to helping them design a game environment that tests not only the limits of the software but also the basic premise of the crowdsourced strategy.

“I'm eager to see how network dynamics, social media and collaborative tools can reshape the way we approach volatile global security problems.” said Jason.

The promise of crowdsourced innovation is greater diversity of ideas as well as an expanded circle of people with a deeper understanding of complex problems. IFTF hopes that this promise can be extended to include the formation of new strategic networks that can think together quickly, but deeply, and leverage multimedia to share their insights with people who ordinarily would not participate in these important deliberations.

“With so much uncertainty in the world right now, collaborative platforms to engage eager minds in problem-solving provides a sense of agency and control in preparing for the future,” said Marina Gorbis, Executive Director. “As a leading force of innovative forecasting methodologies, we realize that creating a truly open and collaborative environment for people to imagine, plan for, and ultimately build solutions for the future can better serve the world.”